PROVIDENCE – Arnold “Buff” Chace Jr., the real-estate developer whose tax breaks from the city are under scrutiny, is asking the court to settle a bitter family dispute without a trial and allow him to remain as the administrator of a $70 million trust.
Chace is asking Superior Court Judge Brian P. Stern to rule in his favor in a lawsuit brought by his cousin Malcolm Chace IV. He argues that the case lacks merit and is motivated by an “inflated sense of entitlement, animus and greed.”
Malcolm, his siblings and their heirs sued in 2021 to have Buff Chace and William Saltonstall removed as co-trustees of a valuable family trust, citing a climate of animus and distrust.
Central to the dispute is a more than $70 million trust that Malcolm’s father, Malcolm “Kim” Chace III, left his heirs upon his death in 2011. Kim named Buff and Saltonstall, his stepson, as trustees. He allotted his wife, Elizabeth Zopfi Chace, $800,000 annually in income from the trust through a codicil signed shortly before his death at 76 from brain cancer.
Buff and Saltonstall charge in court documents that Malcolm, as “ringleader,” is “leveling false accusations in an attempt to reverse his father’s knowing and willful decision” not to appoint him as trustee.
“This move by Malcolm Chace, IV is fueled by his extreme jealousy of his father’s relationship with his stepmother, Defendant Elizabeth Zopfi Chace … and his desperate need to control the funds in the Trust,” lawyers...
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